Posts by Michael Smith

The amazing shipping container: How it changed the world

Many thanks to those guys

...for killing the big waterside unions. Containers made it harder to steal and smuggle. Waterside workers had to look for honest ways to make a living.

Apollo 14 'naut attempts to flog Moon camera for $80k

LRV?

Unlikely, there was no LRV on Apollo 11.

Oz pair in blow-up sex doll whitewater ride

Right at the pound bend tunnel

The yarra is pretty sedate down that stretch until it suddenly goes underground at the Pound Bend Tunnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_Bend_Tunnel

You can try the tunnel on a kayak when the river is low but its pretty dangerous. Flooding would have pushed the river level right up to the roof of the tunnel, leaving little room for dolls and passengers.

Australia claims it invented cutting-edge tech before rest of world

Young Einstein

Yeah, cracking beer atoms

'Howling lesbian gangs' greet jailed Lindsay Lohan

Whats a jailbrid?

Is that a lesbian jailbird?

Elon Musk's Falcon 9 suffers rocketus interruptus in pad test

Operations

I have long been impressed with the ability of SpaceX to safely abort engine burns. In situations where other operators would continue with the burn and lose the vehicle, SpaceX recover, collect data, and retest.

Loud sex ASBO breach woman spared jail

Well actually

"Perhaps you should recommend that she be allowed to emigrate and live next door to you down under? No, thought not."

Maybe she needs to be in a country with a lower population density and more open space.

Eight weeks (suspended) in prison?

For having loud sex and upsetting the (presumably sexless) neighbours? What do you poms do to people who commit real crimes like taking pictures in Trafalgar square?

ISS crew don festive hats

RE: There's no chimney on the ISS?

"How does Santa get in?"

Unless he is flying with the orbital rendezvous capabilities of the great Buzz Aldrin I suspect Santa will get in the ISS with a loud thunk.

Can anyone explain the chunnel fiasco?

Headline

At one point I saw a headline in the media which said "2000 people stuck under the English channel"

In this day and age that's not as bad a thing as it could be...

Now a quick thought about software. Maybe there is something each train has to do when the temperature changes. Maybe it looks up a table (0-9:0, 10-19:1, ..., 50-59:4 (oops, array only goes to 3)) or something similarly systematic. I have seen it happen in a different, and supposedly safety focused industry.

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Deniability

My hobby is creating files full of random numbers. I have written a little C program for the purpose. The police are welcome to play with it and the useless files it has generated.

Are you sure about that?

jg007:

"nothing on my pc is encrypted"

Are there any SSH keys on your system? How about an RSA key for work, or that nice DRM stuff in windows?

Wales adopts mobile average speed cameras

Really automatic?

I recall a bus getting booked for driving at 153 km/h on the Hume Freeway here in Victoria, Australia a couple of years ago. After it was pointed out that this was an impossibility for that vehicle, operators checked back and found that its registration was identical to that of another vehicle on the same road, except for two transposed characters.

Nobody explained how their automatic rego plate system had become dyslexic. Normally its human beings who have that problem.

Loch Ness Monster surfaces on Google Earth

Looks more like a squid to me

Maybe we have been wrong about the monster all along?

Jupiter takes a serious knock

@Jet Set Willy

I think that quote was from Isaac Asimov.

Apollo 11 vets urge Mars mission

Ejector seat instructions

(printed on canopy of jet fighter)

1. Eject canopy

2. Umm...

Thats from Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins. A great read. I recommend it.

And from Tori Amos: Where's Neil when you need him?

Reg reader turns 'homo devil machine' on eBayer

@Jason Yau

My computer has both male and female interfaces.

German lad hit by 30,000 mph meteorite

Filling in the gaps?

Most meteorites, especially ones the size of a pea, hit the ground at terminal velocity. So why was this one going so fast? Hard to see how it can hit him, then make a one foot crater without taking an arm off in the process.

E-cars are a dangerous myth, says top boffin

Sounds like Sir William Henry Preece

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."

http://www.quotes.net/quote/21123

Peugeot preps 4WD diesel hybrid

Needs a motor and a generator

Unlike other hybrids where the entire drive line is in the front of the car, so that the generator can be mechanically coupled to the IC engine.

Tesla Roadster runs for 241 miles in Monte Carlo e-rally

385 kilometres

Is about the range I get from my 1994 Townace van in city traffic. That is easily enough to get me to a nice spot in the country. If I had a tesla might have to charge it to get home though but even now I can think of easy ways to do that.

Failed Nork rocket bits straddle Japan

Threat goes beyond the West Coast of the USA

"The Taepodong-2 design is assessed as potentially being able to deliver a payload as far as the western coast of the USA, or alternatively to put one into low orbit."

If this vehicle can put a payload into orbit, it can deliver that same payload to any point on the Earth.

Mormons demand ICANN plugs net smut hole

/etc/services

p0rn 81/tcp

You know that looks quiet convenient to me.

Worm burrows into Church of England email system

Thats not much spam

"The diocese receives about a million spam messages a year"

Don't we all?

"one virus got through"

What, only one?

In my experience PC infections are often the result of browsing pornography on windows. I suggest the Church of England consider using Ubuntu in the future.

Pratt changes name to Bruce Willis

Well we know who to call...

...if an threatening asteroid needs taking care of.

BBC: Top Gear Tesla didn't run out of juice

Petrol cars run out of fuel too

...but can't be refueled at the next mains socket.

Relay server attack tactic dupes auto-reporting

PermitRootLogin no

...should be in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on any SSH server which has an internet connection.